Ars poetica

In its attempt to understand a poem, New Criticism school is quite well connected
with the term “close reading”, which means the careful analysis of a text with
paying attention to its structure, syntax, figures of speech, and so one. In this way,
a New Critic tries to examine the “formal elements” of the text, such as
characterization, setting of time and place, point of view, plot, images, metaphors
and symbols to interpret the text and find the theme. These formal elements, as
well as linguistic elements (i.e., ambiguity, paradox, irony and tension) are the
critic’s references to interpret and support the theme of a literary work. These
elements are the only true means by with a critic can understand and should
interpret the text. In this respect, we will try to analyze and apply these elements
to "Ars poetica", as an example.

Firstly, we will start with the formal elements. As for the form and structure,
Archibald MacLeish’s poem ‘Ars Poetica’, first published in 1926, is a lyric poem
of twenty-four lines. The title is written in Latin which means the art of poetry.
The importance of the title is that, it sums up what the whole poem is talking
about. It links the modern times to the traditional times (Horace). MacLeish
divides the poem into three eight-line sections, each explaining what a poem
"should be." The first section compares a poem to familiar sights: a fruit, old
medallions, the stone ledge of a casement window, and a flight of birds. The
second section compares a poem to the moon. The third section states that a
poem should just "be," like a painting on a wall or a sculpture on a pedestal.
MacLeish used the traditional use of the complete rhyme and the modern use of
free verse as well. On one hand, for example, there are some rhyming words such
as "dumb and thumb", "releases and trees", "sea and be" and "mute and fruit".
On the other hand, there is incomplete rhyme in words such as “time” and
climbs” and “leaves and mind”. Also, there is a refrain, for example, the line “A
poem should be motionless in time” repeated in line 9 and 15.

As for Setting, the speaker did not give us any specific setting. We have got a
moon, a globed fruit, some birds, and a few lights above the sea, so the setting
could be anywhere. This supports the speaker's idea of poetry being motionless
and timeless. Also, New criticism considers the poem as an object, which is
pleasant such as "globed fruit". Also, MacLeish uses some figures of speech. For
example, he uses simile to compare a poem to "a globed fruit", "old medallions",
"the stone of casement ledges", "a flight of birds", and "the moon climbs". Also,
the poet uses metaphor such as: “A poem should be motionless in time”, he
compares the "motionless" poem by implication to universality. The speaker
compares night to an object that can capture, as “Twig by Twig the night-
entangled trees”, and in line 17 he compares a poem to "untruth".

The poet uses alliteration, for example, he repeats the s sound as in “Silent as
the sleeve-worn stone”, and in line 8, the poet repeats the t sound "Twig by
Twig". There is also "Anaphora", the phrase "A poem should be" occurs five times
in the poem.

As for imagery, the poet uses the image of the moon to state that “a poem should
be motionless in time” like the moon. Also, he uses the images of an "empty
doorway" or “a maple leaf” to suggest the universal experience and history of
grief, and the images of "the leaning grasses and two lights above the sea" to
evoke the experience of love. Also, the “two lights” are images of sun and moon.
In the poem, the poet uses symbolism, for example, when he uses "flight of
birds", he means that we see the beauty of the birds' formation, but we usually
don't hear them, and that's how a poem should be read.

Secondly, as for the linguistic elements, we can see the use of paradox in the
poem, for example, the poet suggests that a poem should be motionless, like a
climbing moon. Obviously, climbing indicates motion. However, this paradox
shows that: “A climbing moon appears motionless when it is observed at any
given moment.” Also, the poet describes poetry to be mute, dumb, and silent.
This seems paradoxical because poetry is filled with words, and it seems
impossible for a poem to be silent or mute.

Also, there are several ambiguities within "Ars Poetica", for example, the
speaker's reference to "dumb" and "climbs". As for the speaker's reference to
"dumb", this word has various meanings because this word could be a description
of "lacking intelligence" or "lacking the human power of speech." As for the
speaker's reference to "climbs", this word could mean to "physically move up
something" or it could mean to "gradually progress."

Finally, we can see that the poem contains the formal and linguistic elements.
Therefore, we can understand the poem and reach to its central theme which is
a poem should captivate the reader with the same allure of a masterly painting
or sculpture. It should be grace of its imagery that it should not have to explain
itself or convey an obvious meaning.
 Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a critical outlook concerned with the relationship between text

and meaning. It was developed by the French critic Jacques Derrida in the late
1960s and became a major influence on literary studies during the late 1970s.
Jacques Derrida's work "Of Grammatology" introduced, in 1967, the majority of
ideas influential within deconstruction. The practice of deconstruction involves
identifying the contradictions within a text’s claim to have a single, stable
meaning, and showing that a text can be taken to mean a variety of things that
differ significantly from what it purports to mean. Apart from Derrida, other
proponents of deconstructive criticism include John Miller and Paul de Man.

According to Derrida, language is not the reliable tool of communication we

believe it to be, but rather a fluid, ambiguous domain of complex experience in
which ideologies programme us without our being aware of them.
Deconstruction, as a theory of literature, rejects the traditional assumption that
language can accurately represent reality. According to deconstructionists,
language is a fundamentally unstable medium; hence, literary texts which are
made up of words have no fixed and single meaning.

Deconstruction argues that language is inherently ambiguous and thus is

responsible for calling the meaning of a text into question. For example, though
most readers typically accept the phrase “Time flies like an arrow” to mean time
moves at a fast pace, a deconstructionist critic would point out that it can be
shown to have multiple meanings when “questioned” and examined closely, This
is shown as following:

• Time (noun) flies (verb) like an arrow (adverb clause) = Time passes quickly.
• Time (verb) flies (object) like an arrow (adverb clause) = Get out your
stopwatch and time the speed of flies as you would time an arrow's flight.
• Time flies (noun) like (verb) an arrow (object) = Time flies are fond of arrows.

Literature, for deconstructionist critics, is as dynamic, ambiguous and unstable as

the language of which it is composed. Meaning is not a stable element residing in
the text for us to uncover or passively consume. Meaning is created by the reader
in the act of reading. Or meaning is produced by the play of language through the
vehicle of the reader, though we generally refer to this process as “the reader”.
Furthermore, the meaning that is created is not a stable element capable of
producing closure; that is, no interpretation has the final word. Rather, literary
texts, like all texts, consist of a multiplicity of overlapping, conflicting meanings in
dynamic, fluid relation to one another and to us.

There are generally two main purposes in deconstructing a literary text, and we
may see either or both at work in any given deconstructive reading:
(1) To reveal the text’s undecidability.
(2) To reveal the complex operations of the ideologies of which the text is
constructed.
To reveal a text’s undecidability is to show that the “meaning” of the text is really
an indefinite, undecidable, plural, conflicting array of possible meaning and that
the text, therefore, has no meaning, in the traditional sense of the word, at all.

Since they believe that literature cannot adequately express its subject matter,
deconstructionists tend to shift their attention away from what is being said to
how language is being used in a text. In many ways, deconstructionist criticism
shares certain tenets with formalism since both methods usually involve close
reading.

In this regard we should refer to "Binary Oppositions". The binary opposition is a

structuralist idea which means "the means by which the units of language have
value or meaning; each unit is defined against what it is not". For example, the
term "man" can be used to signify "human," but "woman" can only refer to the
special case of a female human being. Deconstruction rejects most of the
assumptions of structuralism and more vehemently “Binary Opposition” on the
grounds that such oppositions always privilege one term over the other, that is,
signified (a concept) over the signifier (a sound image or a graphic mark). Derrida
argued that these oppositions were arbitrary and inherently unstable.

In short, what have been considered the “obvious” or “commonsense”

interpretations of a given text are really ideological readings with which we are
so familiar that we consider them “natural.” We create the meaning and value
we “find” in the text. Just as authors cannot help but draw on the assumptions of
their cultural milieu when they construct their texts, readers as well cannot help
but draw on the assumptions of theirs when they construct their readings.
 American Criticism
Myth Criticism

Myth Criticism is a critical approach or technique that seeks mythic meaning or

imagery in literature, looking beyond the immediate context of the work in time
and place. Although the myth criticism school was undertaken in America from
the 1930s through the 1980s, the heyday of the movement lasted from the late
1940s to the mid-1960s. This school is based largely on the works of C. G. Jung
and Joseph Campbell. Some of the school's major figures include Robert Graves,
Francis Fergusson, and G. Wilson Knight.

A myth-critical approach generally uncovers or identifies manifestations

of mythology in a literary work, and uses these mythological elements to aid
interpretation of the work. In his book "20th century literary criticism: A reader"
David Lodge divides Myth Criticism into six types: formalist, historical socio-
logical, archetypal, psychological and perspective.

Myth critics received many attacks from their opponents on the basis that they
avoid stylistic texture, scrupulous close reading and the realities of social history.
However, the reason why myth criticism is so quickly incorporated into the
institution of American literary studies is that it can tolerate almost any politics,
religion and critical approach.

The major principles of MTh criticism are as follows: 1- A myth critic explores how
imagination uses myths and symbols to different cultures and epochs. 2- Myth
critics view literature as a gateway to reveal human desire, fears and
expectations. 3- Myth critics uses a text to interpret how different cultures and
humans in general view themselves and their place in the world. 4- Myth shapes
the meaning of a literary work with all the depth and breadth of its accumulated
meaning, while its manifestation in the literary work breathes life into the
tradition by both passing it on and adding to its meaning. 5- Myth-criticism is
concerned with the moment of contact between the often wide and varied
tradition of a myth, especially as it is understood by the author and audience, and
the literary work which contains a particular manifestation or interpretation of
the myth.

The important thing to remember when discussing mythological literary criticism

is the recurrent patterns of characters in the different works. Mythological critics
do not take simply a dog or cat for example and compare that dog or cat to any
other dog or cat. The mythological critic is looking for the evil dog or the heroic
cat, so that he or she can compare that animal as an archetype to other evil dogs
and heroic cats found in other literary works.

A central concept in mythological criticism is an archetype that analyses symbols

and characters to find a deeper meaning. There are certain characters that the
mythological critic looks for, such as the avenger, who is driven to avenge the
death of his father or another family member. The mythological critic also looks
for inanimate symbols such as the sun, the moon, or some other natural
phenomenon that is repeated in literature to give it significant underlying
meaning. Those are called Archetypes.

So, archetypes are similar ideas, motifs, and images found in many different
myths and normally defined as “universal symbols". Carl Jung believed that these
archetypes served to trigger the collective unconscious fundamental collection of
shared memories that reside in the unconscious of every human being. Jung
believed that these memories are triggered by certain symbols. Whether there is
any truth to this or not, the mythological critic seeks to find these archetypes, and
recognizes that they are helpful tools in solving the concepts in the work as a
whole. For example, the character of Iago in Othello could be compared to the
devil in traditional Christian belief. This character, by different names, appears in
different literary works throughout the world and throughout history. The
mythological critic seeks to find these and compare them to each other.

Mythological criticism is about the symbolic meaning, the undertones of the

archetypes: The moon that looms large over the horizon is different than the
moon that sits quietly unnoticed in the heavens. Each has a different undertone
of the archetype of the moon. While they share certain qualities, they also vary
in certain qualities and meanings.

Mythological Criticism has references to famous mythological stories in works of

literature. These references are included in the hopes of getting universal
reactions from all readers. Unlike the more traditional form of criticism that
focuses on the history of the author and the piece itself, mythological and
archetypal focuses on the history of the gods, goddesses, and other allusions
mentions in the piece that involve mythology.
 Theories of American literature
All of the major first-generation New York Intellectuals wrote critical texts on
American literature and a number of them made memorable contributions to
“American studies”. For example, Rahv’s essays, Kazin’s “On Native Grounds”,
and Chase’ “The American novel and its tradition” where specially noteworthy in
this regard. So, in this respect, we will discuss Rahv’s, Kazin’s and Chase’s
contributions to theories of American literature. theories.

Firstly, Rahv’s essays focused with equal attention upon politics and culture,
Russian and European fiction, and American Literature. In This concern with
American writing, Rahv edited five books; include “The Great Short Novels of
Henry James” and “Discovery of Europe”. He also propounded a particularly well-
known theory of American Literature in his famous essay “Paleface and Redskin”.
According to Rahv, there existed a distinctively American Sociohistorical Polarity
affecting the literary tradition. He characterized this Cultural dissociation of
sensibility as a separation into two antipodal positions occupied by “Palefaces”
and “Redskins”. On one hand, “Palefaces”, like James Dickinson, and Eliot, where
patrician intellectuals given to solitude and a tragic sense of life. Paleface culture,
associated with the idealism of New England, dominated American intellectual
life in the 19th century. On the other hand, Redskin’s, like Whitman, Twain and
Hemingway, where energetic, often hostile to ideas and greedy for experience.
Redskin culture, Scornful of new developments and passive in the face of the
Zeitgeist, dominated the 20th century. The Fundamental category of Rhav’s
literary theory was “experience”. In “the Cult of Experience in American writing”
and in “the native bias”, Rahv argued that Whitman and James, both adopted
positive approaches to experience.

Secondly, When Alfred Kazin published his monumental “On Native Grounds, he
became the leading Americanist among the New York Intellectuals. His thesis
about major American fictionists between 1880s and 1930s was that they
responded primarily to the deformities of industrial capitalism and of science.
Kazin framed his narrative history with two cultural crises. First, America in the
1880s stood “between one society and another”, one moral order and another.
Second, “it is clear to me, “declared Kazin, “that we have reached a definite climax
in [our] Literature, as in so much of our modern liberal culture.”
Characteristics of the New york Intellectuals, he was deeply concerned with the
crises of Capitalism and of Liberalism. For Kazin, part of the general history of
culture was the history of literature and part of literary history was critical history.
His theory of American critical history went as follows: criticism had been the
great American lay philosophy, the intellectual conscience, and intellectual
carryall. It had been a study of literature inherently concerned with ideals of
citizenship, and often less a study of literary texts than a search for some new and
imperative moral order within which American writing could live and grow. For
Kazin, American criticism should be neither political weapon nor scholastic
technique. In Kazin’s view, the tradition of American criticism remained most
alive and dynamic with the New York Intellectuals ‫ ـــ‬not the doctrinaire Marxists
of new critics.

Thirdly, Richard Chase, widely recognized an important leading Americanist,

published six books and edited one casebook all dealing with American literature:
include Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman Reconsidered. Best
known for the American Novel and Its Tradition, Chase offered here a theory of
American literature. Studying the American novel, he sought to distinguish
American from English Fiction by characterizing the great English works as
realistic novels and the great American ones as romance novels.

In Chase’s theory, romance as practiced in America was a nineteenth- and

twentieth-century adaption and modification of traditional realism. Romance is,
a kind of “border” fiction, as in the adventures of Cooper and Simms, or, as in
Hawthorne and later romances. In relation to realistic fiction, the romance novel
tended to turn away from reality and social existence toward the mind and
imagination. Psychologically, it moved away from consciousness toward the
subconscious. Formally, it often preferred legend, Symbol, or allegory over
documentation of lived experience.
According to Chase’s account, romance emerged out of a culture of
contradictions engendered by (1) the geographical and political solitariness of
early national American experience; (2) the powerful puritan Manichaean
melodrama of good and evil; and (3) the dual allegiance of Americans to the
intellectual ways of the Old world and the New.
Chase’s realism and romance paralleled to some extinct Rahv’s Redskin and a
Paleface and Kazin’s sociology and aesthetics as well as Wilson’s earlier
Naturalism and Symbolism. Because the theory of romance seemed to lace the
American novel in a purely aesthetic realm, Chase added and appendix to his
book where he used a historicism and transcendentalism of myth criticism as a
foil to emphasize his own commitment to cultural criticism and realistic literature.